University Challenge results, 1987

These are the results of the twenty-third series which ran on weekdays from 13 July to 4 September 1987 on ITV, plus three special Christmas shows between the series champions of the UK and New Zealand. This was the final series hosted by Bamber Gascoigne, and was followed by a seven-year gap before BBC picked it up again in 1994.

The format was the same as the 1986 series. With the shows running Monday to Friday, each week consisted of five shows in which two pairs of teams would play each other twice. The first would use the conventional scoring system, and the second used a new 'head-to-head' system (marked in green in the table below), with the scores starting from the previous day's result. The head-to-head shows featured 'pass the baton' in which a stick with six lights would start with the contestant on the left of each team. The contestant from the team losing at that point would pick from a large set of categories and Bamber would ask five-point questions on the buzzer from that category to the two contestants with the baton. The first player to answer two would then get a standard set of bonuses for their team, then the baton would move on to the next player. When a team had six right, and thus light up the whole baton, they would receive additional points and the lights would reset.

The winners from the two pairs of games would then play each other in a single knockout game to decide who would go through to the quarter-finals. The highest-scoring team who lost their head-to-head also went through to the quarter-finals, as did the winner of a game between the next two highest-scoring teams that were not already through.

For the quarter-finals and semi-finals it was a single knockout game, and the final was a best-of-three, though only two were recorded if the same team won both.

At Christmas a series of three games were held in the UK between the series winners and the champions of the New Zealand version of the show, following on from the games held in New Zealand the previous year.